It's like Burning Man for shitty arguments (Pt 2.)

It never ends. Like the massive pig farms in America today, Megan produces more fecal matter daily than Manhattan, and it is stored in an open lagoon that occasionally erupts with literal shit geysers, rising dozens of feet into the air.

This worries you because?: [Megan voice] Kevin Drum doesn't seem to realize the rules applying to our nation's colleges and universities are easily ported over to schools covering anywhere in K-12. Scholarship programs given to religious students are totally just like vouchers would be, and show why, again, concerns over separation of church and state are laughable. Also, concerns over proper regulatory control of the quality and safety of charter schools are easily answered by testing kids. (That's her answer. Click the link if you think I'm joking, and No Child Left Behind hasn't been amply demonstrated to be a massive, massive, underfunded mistake.)

Back to morality: [Not Megan voice] Here, we have a self-described libertarian economist lecturing others on morality. Ahem.

It boils down the fact that I think either exit is the proper moral response to a failing system, or it isn't. It can't be good for some people, but not for others.

Many people trying to convince me that suburban liberal parents against vouchers are not gigantic, honking hypocrites, are groping towards an economic concept. Conceding that they think the school environment does make a difference (otherwise they wouldn't have moved to a good district), they say that it's okay to pull your kid out of a system that's failing, because unless other parents stay, yours won't do any good. But its still okay to bar those who cannot afford to escape on their own means from using government means to do so, because the system will collapse. Let me give you a word for the concept you're expressing: economists (and other sorts of social scientists) call it a collective action problem. It's a problem that arises when we can all be made better off by doing something, but only if we all do it at once. If only some people participate, the system breaks down.

Let me give you a word for the concept you're expressing: economists (and other sorts of social scientists) call it a collective action problem. It's a problem that arises when we can all be made better off by doing something, but only if we all do it at once. If only some people participate, the system breaks down.

First, click over to the comments, where Fishbone will explain a little of why this is not what them wurds iz s'posedta mean. (Hint, hint.) Next, ask yourself whether it's realistic for children who live in the inner city to commute to a good suburban school, two ways, each day. Of course, Megan would respond that the schools now are kidnapping children and grinding their bones for bread so anything at all is better, but since we're, presumably, not fucking morons, let's wonder if spending 4 hours in a bus everyday is a great idea. Yes, some rural kids do face such commutes, but, well, that's out of necessity, and the fact that they live in areas with a tiny fraction of urban population density. This question is one of literally thousands of small questions vouchers bring up which Megan doesn't want to admit to not knowing the answer to. But we shouldn't fault her, most of them have no answer, as vouchers are, at heart, a bad idea born of limited minds and selfish or malicious intentions. We'll be kind and include Megan in the former.
Sadly, the post on morality has more horror to inspire.

Here's the thing, though: collective action problems rarely have partial solutions. If exit is the correct solution for players 1-55, it is also the correct solution for players 56-200. Once you have committed to exit, you are committing to the fact that other players will either follow, or suffer terribly. Having conceded that exit is the best thing for your child, you imply that it is also the best action for every other player. Moreover, as the person near the head of the queue, your exit is much more damaging to the system than the exit of the 100th player. You exited because you could, not because you had a moral right to; the 100th player has a much greater moral right to exit than you do.

Saying that it is moral for you to exit the system, while denying exit to the 100th player, is the economic equivalent of "might makes right". You have no greater moral right to exit than that 100th player; in fact, considerably less of one. You merely have the economic means.

And that's something that liberals are supposed to fight.

And there you have it folks, the first ironclad argument she has ever produced; Megan does not know what morality is.

There's still more shit to shovel, so as always, more to come.